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Bill Gates Says There Is Something Perverse In College Ratings

There is a perverse metric rating system for U.S. colleges, says Bill Gates, the world’s most generous and influential philanthropist. The problem is that it gives credit to schools that attract the best students rather than schools that take poorly prepared students and help them get ready for the next stage.

“There is no feedback loop in rating colleges,” Gates explained at a small roundtable of six bloggers and journalists held on Wednesday at the Omni Berkshire Place hotel in New York City, “The control metric shouldn’t be that kids aren’t so qualified. It should be whether colleges are doing their job to teach them. I bet there are community colleges and other colleges that do a good job in that area, but US News & World Report rankings pushes you away from that.”

A college dropout himself, Gates is still a big fan of higher education, though worried about soaring costs and the lack of funding of R&D in education overall. “College is perfectly designed for me. I’ve watched more MIT OpenCourseWare than anyone I know. I love taking college courses, love hanging out at college. I didn’t leave college because it wasn’t suited to me. I left college because I thought I had to move quickly on the Microsoft opportunity. I had already finished three years and if I had used my AP credits properly I would have graduated,” recalled Gates, “I am as fake a dropout as you can get.”

Co-chair of the $36.2 billion (endowment) Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he made these comments and observations about the country’s flawed college ratings as part of a discussion of his just released fifth annual foundation letter, which is dedicated to measuring the effectiveness of various nonprofit initiatives around the world. “In the past year I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition,” he stated.

Gates is trying to address some of these issues through his foundation’s Post Secondary Strategy and says measurements he’d like to see in place include ratings of colleges that look at effectiveness of preparing low-income students as well as ratings of teachers colleges.

While that is very much still in its early stages, he’s farther along in the area of K-12 education where he’s been exploring the best approaches to measuring teachers’ effectiveness and improving performance for several years. “Five years ago the debate was whether you should measure teachers at all,” Gates said, “Amazingly that question hardly exists now. Even the NEA (National Education Association) would agree.”

Thirty three states have laws to measure teacher performance though most rely on test based systems in large part because they are cheaper. “We’re huge believers that if you want teachers to be better, test scores are simply not the way to do it,” Gates noted, “Tests play a role but the reason we downplay them is because it’s not diagnostic of what’s wrong.”

Starting in 2009, the Gates Foundation supported a project known as the Measure of Effective Teaching, or MET, which worked with 3,000 teachers to come up an evaluation and feedback system that helped teachers improve. “The report concluded that there were observable, repeatable and verifiable ways of measuring teacher effectiveness,” wrote Gates in the letter. Anonymous student surveys that asked such questions as “Does your teacher use class time well, get class organized quickly, help you when you are confused – were proven to provide useful feedback as were reports from trained professionals observing teachers at work.

One of those observers, Mary Ann Stavney, a high school “Master Teacher” profiled in the annual letter, spends 70% of her time observing other teachers, meeting with them and providing input. The problem, of course, is that this kind of measuring, particularly the hands-on observation in classrooms, is costly, adding about 2% onto payroll.

That is one reason that implementing such techniques across the nation’s public schools will be a tough sell. Still don’t count anything out, as long as Gates is willing to commit his time and vast resources.

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The point of Universities is not to prepare people for the marketplace, many do, but that’s not the point. Their main goal is to prepare students for life by enriching them in many fields such as mathematics, philosophy, life-sciences, psychology… If you want an workplace-only education go to a vocational training school.

You must be joking. I will hire Philosophy majors in a second over a business student – purely on a practical basis. The absolute last thing we need are more business students in the business world (I work in finance/insurance). These are routinely the dumbest, least mentally agile people in the room and the least likely to creatively solve problems. Just look at any business school curriculum. The “business major” version of any class, e.g., “calculus for business majors” or “writing for business majors” is always the watered down for dummies version. Give me a student of math, philosophy, physics, hell even an art major before a business student – something that had serious rigor to it.

I would say we need to drop business schools first and get back to fundamentals. I can’t tell you how many MBAs I’ve worked with that can barely add fractions or draft a simple communication. But, hey they’re all up on whatever the latest business fad was just published by HBR. Worthless… Anyone that applies for a position on my team might as well not list their degree if it was in business as neither me nor my superiors will consider it as having gone to college “for real.”

And anyway, the purpose of attending a university is not job training but rather to create an educated citizen.

It’s also worth mentioning that Rankings like U.S. News put a large amount of weight on a metric that is almost completely worthless; subjective perception. 22.5% of their ranking is based upon a school’s reputation among peer institutions and high school counselors. That’s what I consider perverse.

Why is the school’s reputation amongst peers perverse? Who else is going to be in a better position to evaluate the academic rigor of an institution? When the faculty of MIT train up a crop of new PhD students from undergraduate institutions around the world, they have a very good sense of how well those feed in institutions select and train.

Harvard, Yale and Princeton are great schools and their top graduates are smart and hard workers. But their reputations are likely enhanced by constant mention in entertainment – it seems that most TV and movie characters are alumni of those three institutions! :)

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This also requires donor support aligned to inter-sectoral planning and implementation among UN Agencies and other stakeholders. About this policy brief This policy brief is one of the main products of the event on “Partnerships for the integration of food security and nutrition, health and gender equality to achieve climate-resilient sustainable development” in the Partnership Forum in Rio +20 Conference. The brief provides key recommendations for the integration of food security and nutrition, health and gender equality, with a view to RIO +20 and MDG agenda after 2015. The policy brief was developed by the Public Health Institute (PHI), World Food Programme (WFP), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice (MRFCJ), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN). The preparation of this policy brief was coordinated by Cristina Tirado (PHI), with contributions from Edward Heinemann (IFAD), Oscar Ekdahl (WFP), Catherine Zanev (PAM), Carlo Scaramella (PAM), Celine Clarke (MRFCJ), Tara shine (MRFCJ), Lucy Wanjiru (UNDP), Francesco Branca (WHO), Marina Maiero (WHO), Elena Villalobos (WHO), Alberto Sandoval (FAO), Yianna Lambrou (FAO), Regina Laub (FAO). The document was edited by Lance Garmer and graphic design done by Céline Beuvin with UNDP support. The document was printed by WFP … YOU CAN HELP CHANGE THAT JOINED WITH A GESTURE WITH A SMALL DONATION. AGENCY 0152-X BANK ACCOUNT 21783-2 BRASIL.TITULAR VANDERLUCIO LOPES DA SILVA, A DEDICATED SERVICE ONLY TO BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED THIS FIM.TENDO FULL AWARENESS TO BE DOING WELL NOT LOOK WHO. http://vanderlucio42.wordpress.com/